flowers — Page 196

Butterflies, Found Treasures & Zinnias

August 17, 2016 at 10:05 am by Claudia

I think…fingers crossed…that the hot and extremely humid weather we’ve been having for over a week and a half has broken. I’ll know more when I venture outside. For the first time in what seems to be a long time, the windows are open.

Yesterday, I glimpsed a butterfly near the butterfly bush. It seemed to be darker than the Eastern Swallowtails that hang around here. Could it be a Monarch, so rarely seen nowadays? I grabbed a camera, ran outside, verified that a gorgeous Monarch was perched on my bush and snapped a picture. Want to see it?

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It was so humid that my lens steamed up. By the time I realized it and wiped the lens, the Monarch was gone.

And then I surprised a hummingbird – twice – who was dining on the phlox. Again. The steamy lens.

That’s how frigging humid it was here yesterday. At one point, the clouds were covering the sun and I thought it was less humid than it actually was, so I decided to mow the corral. Thirty minutes later, dripping wet, I acknowledged that I had misjudged the atmospheric conditions.

Second shower of the day.

Today, however, I think we’ll be able to tackle the front lawn. Every blade of grass around here is at least 6 inches long. It’s making me crazy.

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I have this transferware plate that lives on the sideboard. It holds ‘found treasures.’ A fossil and seashells found in Florida and California, an agate, a crystal, a broken sand dollar, a pod, blue glass, broken china found on our property, birds eggs, a decorative nozzle also found on the property. The newest addition is the green teacup handle. Somehow these things just emerge from the ground after years of being buried. I found this in the Memorial Garden.

That’s a wild turkey feather on the left, along with another recently found feather.

As I said on Instagram a while back, these remind me of the treasures that Boo Radley painstakingly hides in the tree – gifts for Jem and Scout. Oh, that book, it melts my heart.

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A zinnia getting ready to open. The leaves on this one were being attacked by a darned Japanese Beetle. I thought they were gone for the season, so I was rather outraged when I found a beetle eating the leaves on one of my long awaited zinnias. Get out of here, Japanese Beetles! You have overstayed your welcome.

Don’t forget to check out my post on Replens and leave a comment for a chance to win a $100 Visa Gift Card. Just click here! #ad

Heads up! Just got a message that Don’s episode of Mr. Robot airs tonight at 10 pm on USA!

Happy Wednesday.

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First and Last

August 15, 2016 at 9:52 am by Claudia

The first zinnia:

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They’ve been a long time coming. Next year, I am amending the soil in the chicken wire fence garden. It clearly needs some nutrients.

The last of the daylilies:

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I had two surprise blooms this week. That nicely extended the day lily season, but I’m pretty sure this is it.

It’s a soggy, humid mess out there. The hollyhock looks like it was struck down by some disease, it hasn’t been, but it is definitely done. The rain has been hard on all the flowers in the garden. There are weeds everywhere. It was cloudy yesterday morning, and it seemed cooler outside, so I grabbed the weed chomper and worked on the area surrounding the Funky Patio. At the end of five minutes or so, which also included some quick stabs at weeding, I was dripping.

Maybe this is nature’s way to slowly bring me around to the fact that September is a couple of weeks away. The garden looks bedraggled. I only have some much energy/desire to tackle it at this point in the summer. The humidity is stifling.

I’m not kidding. I think Mother Nature has a way of bringing us around to the realization that it’s almost over until next year. She breaks the news gently, but the facts stare us in the face and we have to admit defeat.

Though I’m still waiting on my morning glories and moonflowers and the rest of my zinnias.

Yesterday, I tackled the Helmer drawer unit from IKEA.

Can I just say that it was a pain in the tush? In the interest of total honesty, it was a pain in the tush because I had the drawer glides installed incorrectly and I didn’t realize it until I had cursed for over an hour as I tried to get the damn thing together. I finally realized my mistake and took the whole thing apart.

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It’s fine now. It’s very inexpensive and, therefore, the quality is fairly flimsy, but it will do until I can afford something else. Or even want something else. By the way, the screws that attach the casters to the base won’t go into the base correctly. They, my friends, were also a pain in the tush.

Little Z’s dollhouse should be a breeze compared to this.

We’re going to try to mow a bit this morning before it gets real hot. The grass is so long – everywhere – and there is still rain in the forecast for this week, so we have to grab any non-rainy time we can get.

Don’s getting a new iPhone today and he’s very excited. He’s been using an older model, much smaller than the one I have, and he needs something bigger and faster. He’s a big guy and he’s got big hands. Since he was eligible for an upgrade, his shiny new phone will be delivered to our door today.

Happy Monday.

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Friday Thoughts

August 12, 2016 at 9:47 am by Claudia

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• I’m living in a sauna.

It’s very hot and unbelievably humid out here in the Northeast. The windows of the cottage are sporting a layer of moisture which makes the view decidedly foggy. We had at least 4 thunderstorms yesterday and they were whoppers.

This morning I went outside to get some pictures and the danged rain has denuded lots of the phlox, forced the branches of the butterfly bush downward, and weeds have seemingly sprung up overnight. This is that time in the summer that I begin to lose interest in weeding the garden; I look at it, sigh, and move on. But I think I’ll force myself to weed it once this rain lets up – next week. Yep. The storms and the humidity are going to be with us until the first part of next week.

Let’s not even think about how much grass we’re going to have to mow.

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The daylily that bloomed in very early summer presented me with two surprise flowers this morning.

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• We may or may not go to IKEA today. We’ll see. If not, it will be next week. I need to get a few things there.

• We’ve been watching the Olympics, especially swimming and diving, which are our favorites. I won’t say anything about Michael Phelps because others have said it much better than I can. He is a joy to watch. Extraordinary. We are so lucky to witness this incredible athlete over the course of the last four – or is it five? – Olympics. All of the other medal winners are amazing, as well as those athletes who train and sacrifice and don’t come home with a medal, but are still the best in the world. One of my former students from Boston University is married to Silver Medalist, Scott Donie – a diver who medaled in Barcelona. I’ve been asking her questions on FB – about the small towels, for instance. It turns out they are shammys. And then there’s my six degrees of separation connection through my sister. My nephew swam competitively for years and so the family knows Ryan Murphy and his brother and parents (according to Mere, the nicest people you could ever hope to meet) and several other swimmers that are competing in Rio.

The Olympics has been a welcome change during this election season; something hopeful that brings the world together, instead of separating us. More, please.

• Those links I promised you:

A List of Facts Debunking Anti-Hillary Clinton Myths, Lies & Ridiculous Conspiracies.

Why Are You Convinced Hillary is a Criminal?

And this Op-Ed in the NY Times from the pen of David Brooks: Trump’s Enablers Will Finally Have to Take a Stand.

Finally, the Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman that I referenced on Wednesday: Trump’s Wink Wink to ‘Second Amendment People.’

Read or don’t read, whatever you like.

• Despite the occasional reader who never comments but feels the need to finally comment in order to tell me that they feel a political post has ‘no place’ on my blog so they will be unsubscribing, I’m going to write about this election when I feel moved to. I won’t inundate you with posts, though I could write every day on it and never run out of things to say! This blog is a mix of things and that mix includes the things I feel passionately about, including: my husband, my dogs, my house, my garden, my collections, kindness, common decency, and the state of our world, especially the state of our country.

As always, I determine the content. But you know that. I won’t be censoring myself in order to keep the number of readers I have at a certain level to gain more ad income. If I’d wanted to do that, I would have shaped this blog into a real money maker and never issued any statement that could be interpreted as provocative. It would have been pretty. It would have been bland. It would have bored me to tears.

That ain’t me, my friends. As my dear friend Joe once said, “You don’t want to mess with the Hill girls.” The Hill girls don’t shrink from speaking out.

Okay.

Happy Friday.

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Butterflies, Found Treasures & Zinnias

First and Last

Friday Thoughts

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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